Like most of us, Clint Eastwood’s got the day off Thursday, now that he’s finished his new movie “The Mule.” And he’s keeping his Thanksgiving plans pretty low-key.

“I'm going to have dinner with my family and that's about it. It's the same as everybody else's in the world I know,” the 88-year-old actor/director/Hollywood legend tells USA TODAY while discussing “The Mule” (in theaters Dec. 14). “We're going to sit down and have a meal and a glass of wine or something and say hello.”

While food and spirits are on his Thanksgiving table, politics are not. Which some might find surprising for the one-time mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, who has been an outspoken figure in that arena over the years. (He endorsed Mitt Romney at the 2012 Republican National Convention – where Eastwood famously addressed a chair as Barack Obama in a speech – and four years later likened Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to Abbott and Costello.)

“Nobody in our family really discusses politics too much,” Eastwood says. “I couldn't tell you what their feelings are about certain things. Now, once in a while, stuff comes up that's in the news, and then you wonder about it and you wonder why they're handling it this way or that way. And once in a while a conversation like that will come up, but primarily probably not on Thanksgiving.”

Mainly, though, it’s just about the wine, turkey “and whatever outrageous things that have gone on in the year, a lot of reminiscing.”

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